This is me apologizing. This is me finally coming up for air and coughing up apologizes instead of swallowing them down with gulps of water. This is me looking at your face and seeing the bags under your eyes because you stayed up all night trying to call me and apologizing. Looking at your nails and seeing the skin around them ****** and scabbed and the beds unevenly bitten down to nothing and apologizing. Looking at your eyes and seeing the way you bought colored contacts to cover the fact you spent days unmoving from a mirror trying to love yourself and apologizing. This is me seeing the needle points on your lips from where you injected your own blood to attempt to regain that color I claimed to be in love with and apologizing. As I'm looking at your arms and seeing where you scrubbed your skin with chemicals trying to erase the essence of me and when you smile I can see that you chugged a bottle of bleach to try and whiten your teeth bright enough so that you could be accepted by God himself into the pearly gates all I can do is apologize. I'm sorry that you spent hours carving my name into his back with your fingernails and biting your own tongue so hard it bled when he told you he loved you. When his flesh connected with yours causing the world to stop for a second and listen to your shrieking I know it was me you were screaming for and I'm sorry. As I'm standing here staring at you and watching them put brush stroke after brush stroke of blush onto your lovely pale cheeks trying to restore the life you lost so many years ago I'm finally realizing it's too late to apologize yet all I can think about is how this isn't even close to the eulogy you deserved. I should be talking about the way you danced and how your voice made my own falter momentarily and how you were more alive when you were dying than I ever will be when I'm living rather than apologizing but all I can seem to rationalize is how I spent years dry swallowing your love and spitting up knives to use to carve my initials into your thigh so you would always remember me and how I never even had the common decency to count to three before destroying you and I'm sorry. I'm afraid to look up now that I've finished apologizing because I know your empty eyes filled with nothingness will be staring back so horribly confused because I doubt you ever continued listening after I used the world eulogy and I'm sure you're going to wonder why I'm talking as if I'm sitting at your funeral rather than on the end of your bed but I don't know how else to make you grasp the concept of what you're doing to yourself by loving me in a better way than this and I'm sorry. C.a.l

The bottom line is I'm always the one stuck apologizing. There's this thing inside of me that thinks you can do no wrong to the point that when you're standing over me with blood on your hands staring at the knife in my chest I will look up at you and apologize for ruining your favorite white shirt and staining your skin. When you're holding me deep in the icy cold water and I'm gasping for breath only to fill my lungs with ice chips I will shake my head and wonder why the hell I didn't think to wear warmer clothes. And of course, when you tell me you don't love me anymore I won't believe for a second it's because of the demons inside your own head or that you're intentionally saying it to rip my heart into irreparable pieces I will convince myself with every fiber of my being that it's because I'm just not what you need. I didn't hug tight enough or wipe your tears away in the right way or buy the right kind of flowers on your birthday and I especially didn't let you in to my mind and body and soul enough. I constantly did my best to push you away and I guess ultimately I did but it doesn't seem I did  it soon enough because now you're laughing at me as I'm on my knees in front of you begging you to take me back and in between mumbled "I love you's" I'm apologizing  yet again only this time I can't seem to find a way to put into words why it's my fault and not yours because maybe, for once, you're wrong. Maybe you ****** up this time. But I think we both know that I could never admit that or make myself believe it but while I try I'll stay here on my knees begging for forgiveness for all of your mistakes. C.a.l

I KNOW LOVE AND INTIMACY ARENT TWO IN THE SAME BY DICTIONARY DEFINITION BUT WHEN IM STARING INTO HIS EYES AND SEEING YOUR REFLECTION I CANT HELP BUT THINK THEY ARE. WHEN IM BITING ONTO HIS SHOULDER MUFFLING MY MOANS BUT I DONT HAVE THE HEART TO TELL HIM AFTERWARDS IT WASNT BECAUSE I COULDN'T CONTROL MYSELF BUT RATHER THAT I COULDN'T KEEP FROM MOANING YOUR NAME FOLLOWED BY A STRING OF SCRAMBLED WORDS ALL FORMED BY THE SAME LETTERS USED TO SPELL I LOVE YOU I CANT IMAGINE A PLACE WHERE INTIMACY AND LOVE ARENT DIRECTLY RELATED BECAUSE IT IS ******* IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO BE INTIMATE WITH SOMEBODY REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH I DRINK AND HOW MANY TIMES I SCREAM INTO MIRRORS TELLING MYSELF TO GET OVER YOU WITHOUT IMAGINING YOUR FINGERTIPS TRAVELING THE LENGTH OF MY SPINE INSTEAD OF HIS AND YOUR WORDS SPILLING INTO MY MIND WHILE WE LAY ENTANGLED IN SHEETS THAT ARE SOILED WITH BROKEN MEMORIES AND SHATTERED DREAMS. IF INTIMACY AND LOVE ARENT SECRETLY GLUED TOGETHER WITH YOUR NAME THEN HOPELESSNESS AND DESPERATION MUST BE TIED TOGETHER WITH MINE BECAUSE I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO DESPERATE TO FEEL INTIMACY YET STILL HOPELESSLY CRAVING IT FROM YOU AND YOU ALONE EVEN AFTER IT HAS BEEN PRESENTED TO ME IN A DIAMOND PLATED BOX FILLED WITH LETTERS ATTEMPTING TO MATCH THE ONES YOU USED TO SPEND HOURS WRITING

c.a.l

Do you remember when you were little,
how your parents would give you jigsaw puzzles just to occupy your time.
You'd open the box and it would smell like cardboard and paint and there would be dust sitting in the corners after you dumped all the pieces out.
I always started with the edges first.
Work along the outside and get a boarder, then fill it in.
But it seemed inevitable that at some point
You'd lose a piece
You would get to the end and search the whole house
Under pillows, under beds, in cabinets, everywhere
You couldn't find it
Eventually you'd give up and go eat dinner
But months later, it would turn up
In the same spot you know you had already looked
It would be there
Waiting for you
It's kind of funny really because now, years later, nothing's changed
You go to school and you're given a box
Filled with college applications and marriage and kids and adventures and getting arrested on that back road and falling in love with that person
You dump it all out and they give you until you graduate to sort it out
What do you want to be
Who do you want to be with
Where do you want to do it
Put it all together by the time you graduate
Get a plan
So you start with the edges
Graduate, go to this school and major in this degree
Move to this city, get this job, make this much money
But once you get the edges built you start filling it in
You fall in love with a boy who drinks too much and smokes unfiltered cigarettes
You sit on rooftops with him and you love him, God do you love him
Eventually you tell him you've got to finish the puzzle and you push him to the side
You fill in all the rest of the middle
Husband, kids, raises at work, vacations, red wine that you secretly hate, all of it
Eventually though you get to the end
The last piece
The piece that has happiness scribbled on the back in a blue ink pen
And you can't ******* find it
You look in your home and in your children and in your husbands wedding vows and it's just not there
Life goes on, you sleep in a different room and pretend to still be in love
For the kids sake of course
But one day you're going to be standing in a coffee shop
The same coffee shop you know you already looked in
And he's going to walk into you
Spill his drink down your blouse and murmur that he's still in love with you while you discuss the weather
You're going to find that puzzle piece
Just try to find it before you lose patience and cut something else to fit in its place.
C.a.l

I'm in love with you
But you're a chain smoker
And I'm just another pack of cigarettes
I'm in love with you
But you're an alcoholic
And I'm just the last shot of ***** in a bottle
I'm in love with you
But you're a hopeless romantic
And I'm just another red rose lacking compassion
I'm ******* in love with you
But you're reckless with things you love
And I'm that cliff you should've never jumped off of
c.a.l

The day I met you it terrified me. You ordered your drink before me and when I heard you mutter the words "whiskey on the rocks" I couldn't help but laugh a little. You, drinking whiskey? When you turned and your eyes laid on mine I realized that beneath the sparkly dress and winged eyeliner you were absolutely amazing. Before you could mention my laughing at you the bartender asked what I wanted and as I ordered a bottle of champagne you absolutely lost it. You threw your head back and gasped and rolled your eyes. You were straightforward and awful. You were ****** and full of yourself. You were ******* beautiful. I followed you back to your table and sat down without asking permission. We talked a lot. I remember you said your favorite song was Piano Man and that you hated champagne. But as you said that you took my glass from me and giggled as the bubbles tickles the tip of your nose. Six months later we were laying on the hood of my car staring at the black sky and you commented on the fact none of the constellations were visible as you sipped a glass of the same brand of whiskey you had that first night and I didn't hear a thing besides the way your lips moved and no matter how hard I focused none of the words formed anything rational in my mind and that's the exact moment I told you I loved you. I remember the way you smirked and kicked your lips before taking a breath and telling me that I've been in love with you since the moment I saw you order your drink and you were right.

I'm not sure why I'm telling you this. Now, sixty years later, I mean. Why now. Why didn't I agree with you then. Why can't I write what I should be and why am I writing about this instead. Why am I staring into your tired eyes discussing everything and nothing and why didn't I listen that night on the hood of my car. I do know what you said though. I figured it out years later. You were saying how although the sky was black the bubbles in my champagne almost looked the same as a variety of constellations all jumbled together. I know you won't remember this tomorrow. You don't remember anything anymore. Not that you need to. I remember that you like whiskey on the rocks and love the way champagne looks like a miniature universe of stars and planets and designs and I remember that you loved when I wrote about you out loud rather than on paper. How many more days do you think I'll be able to sneak past the nurses into your room with glasses full of ice and a typewriter with no ink so I can try to make you remember again. C.a.l

It's weird because you can be around somebody every hour of every day and feel absolutely nothing, not the slightest ounce of pain, love, compassion, anything. You're just neutral towards them. But then one day you meet one person who feels like a rush of ****** through your veins and you can't get enough of it. You don't even know if it's a good or bad feeling because it overwhelms every ounce of common sense you have in your being to figure it out but you know you love it. You love the way they make you stay awake all hours of the night replaying one sentence they said coming up with a hundred different possible meanings and you love how they make your heart physically hurt in your chest every time they speak because their voice is so beautiful that it can't help but rip you apart and you love that they challenge you. You could be backed against a wall screaming in their face and all you can think about is how ******* mesmerizing their eyes are when they're upset and how much you love it. You forget how to watch a movie on your own because you grow so used to watching their ****** expressions tell a better storyline than the original script ever could and you forget the words to your favorite song because all you can hear is how their voice quivers on that one phrase that hits a little too close to home for them and you love it. You love all of those things, that feeling of being so high on their presence alone that you can't even begin to question it. You love it so much you don't realize that while the ****** that is them races through your veins it's killing your internal functions along the way and it's causing your skin to turn a pale shade of grey. All you can feel and think and see is them and how much you love it and you miss all of the negative things they are doing to tear you apart limb from limb and before long you have to take a lethal does of their midnight words to feel that same high that you used to feel with even the simplest hello. Soon you have to hear them tell you they never loved you to even begin to feel your heart race only now it all hits at once, all of the negatives that have been shutting down your body crash on you at once and you don't even feel your lungs being filled with fluids because you're so focused on grasping your chest and screaming why why why. Why the **** didn't I get help when it was offered and why did I think the highs would ever be worth this devastating low. You finally see that the entire time you've been the addict and they've been the drug that will ultimately be your own demise. C.a.l

If you sit in a hospital room long enough it looks a lot like a funeral home
If you hear a doctor say they don't know what to do anymore enough times it sounds a lot like a mortician asking about the funeral arrangements
When you watch the lines on a heart monitor flutter out of rhythm enough times it feels a lot like your own has stopped beating
When you sit in an ambulance reciting someone's medical history enough times you almost want to beg them to drive slower
As you're standing in the middle of the funeral home you'll realize it's more calming than a hospital room ever could have been
When you hear the sirens and it registers in your mind they can't possibly be coming for her you'll look down and finally see what you've done

I told you I never wanted to kiss anyone else and you looked so confused because you didn't understand the way that your lips were gentle enough to erase the memories of anyone else before you and taint the thoughts of anyone else after you. You didn't understand that kissing you felt like falling off of a building and being held by the hands of God himself all at the same time. You didn't understand that as I kissed you I could feel all of the hurt and pain you had ever experienced because it was so evident just from the way you kissed me like your life depended on it and that if that kiss didn't take my breath away your life would never feel complete and that if I wasn't sitting there with my fingertips brushing over my lips days, weeks, months, years, after the fact remembering the way it felt that you hadn't done it good enough and you would keep trying until you did but all of those times I told you to kiss me again so I could remember it for the rest of my life I was lying purely to get to feel you again because I could never forget the way you slipped inside of my soul and patched all of the tears in my heart all while just barely brushing your perfectly beautiful lips against mine that were cracked from crying. I could never forget the way your moans settled in my stomach like sugar cubes settling in a cup of tea in the morning or the way your words sounded more poetic than I could ever imagine for my own to sound. I could never forget that and here I am months later sitting with my fingertips brushing against my lips and goosebumps rising on my skin remembering the way you kissed me that last time and how I will spend the rest of my life trying to duplicate that with someone else. C.a.l

Here we are again
The same place we always end up.
It's like when the day ends
and everyone else goes to bed,
we find this feeling more comfortable
than any bed ever could be.
And so we end up going days
upon days
without sleep.
We are forever stuck in this cycle of wanting to
but not needing to
needing to
but not wanting to
and ultimately not being able to want
or need
to admit the truth of what's really happening
behind closed doors.
Like one of those families
that show up to church on Easter Day
and Christmas Eve,
but curse gods name every other day of the year,
we sit here
and pretend that we aren't doing this again.
That I'm not sitting here
telling you I love you,
and you're not sitting there
staring at me
not knowing what to say.
Just like old times
we would rather pretend
that this is just an awkward silence,
totally normal.
Normal like missing two weeks of work
because you're too distraught
over someone's lack of love for you
to get out of bed.
Normal like daydreaming
of burning my skin with bleach
to erase the feeling of your hands.
When I say "I love you",
you say absolutely nothing,
and I flinch
as if your fist is inches from my body.
We sit here
and pretend to be entirely too calm,
pretend like I'm not going to go home
and try to **** myself again.
Pretend like you really didn't see the texts,
not that you were ignoring them.
Every moment of my life
feels like this,
I cannot remember a time
when every ounce of my time
was not occupied by feeling this.
There are photos of me with people
who call themselves friends
all over the Internet,
which proves I used to get enjoyment
from things other than you,
but now,
in this inescapable moment,
I can't even remember their names.
I'm the type of person
who finds solace in routine,
but sitting here explaining to you
how my dying body is decaying
from the inside out
because of this sadness,
because of this overwhelming love,
explaining this to you
every day of my life
only to be greeted with silence yet again,
is this furthest thing from comfort
that I have ever had to encounter.

When you see other couples sitting in the same coffee shop in which you met him does it tear you apart? Do you look at them holding hands and laughing and want to run over and slap them both and tell them it isn't real? That none of this **** we call love is real. He will leave because she isn't ready to settle down and then he will be calling her when he's forty years old and asking why she wanted to break into that abandoned building so badly but she'll say honey I've got to call you back my five children I didn't want are on their way to school and I've got to hurry to go to my office job because I never pursued to artistic career you always wished I would. Do you want to take their life and throw it in their face and tell her to flush the promise ring along with the rest of her life because after you love someone as deeply as she does him you're ****** for life. They leave and you spend the next seventy years wondering if their voicemail is still dedicated to you. You see the way their eyes glow and their gradient smiles filled with laughter bounce off the walls and you miss every piece of him so much but you never say anything. Instead you go sit in your car and record a voicemail to yourself pretending as if he'll hear it in the morning and maybe have the same gradient smile or vibrant eyes that he did so many years ago. C.a.l

A present with the label simply saying "who you used to be"  filled with old photographs of you being truly happy

A gift bag filled with letters from your old self begging you to stop trying to fix everything and just live

Boxes upon boxes of videos of you screaming into an empty room asking yourself why the ******* let it get that far

People mailing you Christmas cards filled with their most sincere apologies and condolences addressed to everyone but you

Getting red roses smothered with black paint instead of poinsettias mailed to your door step with a note attached that reads "how could you be so ******* selfish"

Looking into the mirror fixing your makeup for Christmas dinner only to see your mother in the reflection attempting to smear concealer over the smudged mascara on her cheeks while whispering your name

Trying to scrub the red wine stains out of your bedroom floor before realizing its your blood

Attempting to turn down the music or at least change the song just too see a preacher standing over your forever home blessing your soul

Calling 911 and begging them to save you from this building you're trapped in that's engulfed in flames but the other end of the line is nothing but shrieks as the operator recognizes your name from the obituary two weeks ago

C.a.l

How far into the church pew did you dig trying to find the person everyone believes you to be
How many bibles did you burn just trying to ingest something purer than your own soul
How many gallons of holy water did you pour over yourself and into your lungs trying to drown out the memory of her hands
Still to this day when his hands are around your throat you try to convince yourself it's God finally finishing what he started
When you were told God loves all his children they felt the need to add "even you..." at the end and maybe that's why you didn't believe it

I LOVED YOU I ******* LOVED YOU AND YOU KNEW YOU DIDNT LOVE ME YOU KNEW IT WAS ALL A GAME TO YOU AND YOU LOVED THE WAY I FIT INTO THE PALM OF YOUR HAND LIKE A PERFECT CHESS PIECE BUT YOU DIDNT ******* LOVE ME YOU DIDNT THINK ABOUT ME AT ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT COMPLETELY FORGETTING THAT YOU NEEDED SLEEP AND YOUR HEART DIDNT ACHE WHEN I CRIED AND YOU DIDNT CLENCH YOUR FISTS SO HARD YOUR KNUCKLES TURNED WHITE WHEN I TOLD YOU HE HURT ME SO YOU DIDNT LOVE ME BECAUSE WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEBODY THEIR LAUGH IS THE ONLY THING IN EXISTENCE THAT CAN MAKE YOUR HEART BEAT SO FAST YOU CANT BREATHE AND WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEBODY YOU DONT LOOK AT THEIR LIPS AND THINK OF KISSING THEM YOU LOOK AT THEIR LIPS AND THINK ABOUT HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY LOOK WHEN THEY FORM THE WORDS I LOVE YOU MORE AND YOU NEVER ******* LOVED ME BECAUSE YOU NEVER REALLY CARED WHEN YOU ASKED IF I WAS OKAY AND I KNOW ALL OF THESE THINGS BECAUSE I ******* LOVED YOU. I LOVED YOU MORE THAN I HAD EVER LOVED ANYONE AND MORE THAN I WILL EVER BE ABLE TO LOVE ANYONE EVER AGAIN BECAUSE WHEN YOU FINALLY ADMITTED IT WAS ALL A GAME TO YOU IT LEFT MY SOUL SO IRREPARABLY SCARRED THAT I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FEEL LOVE FOR ANYONE ELSE BECAUSE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HEAL THOSE WOUNDS ARE YOU BUT INSTEAD YOURE STANDING THERE WONDERING WHY I CALLED YOU LAST NIGHT BEGGING YOU TO COME TO  MY FUNERAL IN A WEEK AND YOU STILL DONT ******* LOVE ME c.a.l

How many hours did you spend digging in the yard of your childhood home searching for the note your father never really left
Have you ever even admitted that the reason your walls are lined with broken picture frames is because you tore them apart looking for him
When you finally found him how long did you try to get up the courage to punch him before realizing you were standing in a graveyard?

I can still remember the way I stood shaking and screaming into the mirror clawing at my own skin, trying to make it all stop. Looking into my own eyes and seeing nothing but blurry lines of red and hopeless hands grasping my chest trying to catch my breath because I was getting light headed. I remember stepping into the shower and flinching under the hot water but only then turning it up even hotter and just standing there counting the goosebumps on my arms and the bruises on my thighs and in that moment I went from feeling everything to nothing. My breathing returned to normal and my tears evaporated into the stream of water bouncing off my skin. My heart stopped aching and I stopped scratching my own skin to try and get the feelings of you off of me. I remember how when I got out of the shower I stood again facing the mirror and raised my palm up to my chest simply to make sure my heart was still beating and when I looked into my eyes I didn't see anything. I didn't see fear and I didn't see her and I didn't even see myself. It was as if I was watching my reflection dig my grave as I ran the brush through my hair and dropped flower petals on my casket as I rubbed lotion on my skin. The first time something died in my hands it was myself because of you. You had pushed my heart and soul and willpower to the point of absolute destruction and despair and with that last breathless sob ripped out every piece of me to keep in your pocket as a keep sake. You knew. As soon as you saw me you knew. You knew I wasn't alive anymore but rather a shell of a person put on to keep up appearances and you ******* hated it. You hated that I wasn't seeking your approval or begging you to stop touching me and you hated that I didn't flinch when you said my name. It drove you to lengths I still can't comprehend and left stories I still can't force myself to recollect. The day I left it still drove you crazy that as I hugged you goodbye I didn't smile or cry or even say a word. I hugged you. I limply wrapped my arms around yours and didn't move when you whispered how much I would regret it in my ear. It drove you insane. It's still driving you insane. If only you knew that before I was two miles down the road I started sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe and screamed so loud I scared everyone around me. I just kept screaming your name and asking why and I pulled at my hair and hit over where you had already left bruises and I tried to comprehend how you were even worthy of living. If only you knew that still to this day I flinch when people touch me and cry when I hear the first verse of a certain song. If only you knew that despite the fact the first thing I ever held in my hands and watched die was my own heart, the first thing I watched break itself down into unimaginably small prices was also myself and the entire time while I watched I looked in the mirror at my eyes and screamed your name because it's been years and I'm still not ******* over you and I'm still not alive but I'm not dead either and I'm sitting in the inconceivable purgatory trying to forget the way your hands stung against my skin and your words cut into my soul. C.a.l

And your words settled someplace deep in my soul like bricks sinking to the bottom of the ocean because all I could feel was you and those words and that heaviness like I would never be able to breathe again. You told me you loved me but said you were tired, so ******* tired, and you just couldn't do it anymore but you figured I at least deserved a phone call since I had always been the only person to answer at 3 am when you needed it the most, but don't waste your time, you told me, you can't change my mind this time. I'm too far gone and the pills are already settling in my bloodstream, as you spoke I could hear the words getting wrapped up and tangled on the tip of your tongue because the first thing to go was your ability to say what you wanted and instead all you could say was the truth. You told me it would be okay and that I shouldn't blame myself but in the next breath came a sob and a scream, a blood curdling heart wrenching scream full of pain for no one in particular but still to this day every time I close my eyes I hear that scream and I know it was meant for me. Between that scream and those words my chest has never felt so full, like a tsunami around my heart spilling into my lungs taking every last ounce of air from my body and throwing it down to the bottom of the ocean with those bricks, and those words, and of course, with you. C.a.l

His voice is an endless line of I love you's mixed with an even longer line of I can't love you's. It tears you apart with a single word because it holds more secrets behind each syllable than most people hold in their entire body and you become so focused on peeling back the meaning behind each word that you can no longer string them together in your own mind to form a coherent sentence so when you ask him to repeat himself he assumes you weren't listening when realistically you were listening up until he got to the words love and hate right next to one another and his voice shook just the tiniest bit and you spent the rest of the time trying to pick apart why something so small could affect him that much and why had no one ever healed the pain behind those words for him because when he speaks you can't help but feel as if you're in the eye of a hurricane surrounded by rushing winds and pouring rain on every side of you but where you stand with him is calm and silent all except for his words falling into your soul and settling in your heart so deep that you will never be able to hear another person tell you Goodmorning without comparing the raspiness in their voice to the smooth calmness of his and no matter how many strangers beds you stay in with the ability to lie and tell them you love them but not being able to even say their name when you wake up tangled in their sheets you'll remember the way they fell asleep the night before after a simple goodnight and how he would have spent hours upon hours just talking to you and muttering about how your eyes are brighter than the sun itself until you fell asleep because he knows you can't fall asleep to silence and no matter how much you pretend you never heard him speak or called him just to listen to him say your name over and over again his voice will always be settled somewhere deep in your heart scarring the path that any other voice you come into contact with will travel across. C.a.l

And your words burned through my soul faster than a forest fire burning through trees trying to escape the buckets of water being dumped on it because I knew you meant them. I knew when you said you wouldn't ever be able to forgive me you meant it and as that realization fell through every inch of my heart I could feel it slowly being ripped up just like how you used to tear handfuls of grass out of that meadow where we used to sit when you were sad only this time you couldn't just get up and pretend you hadn't completely ripped the life out of something so fragile because you had to watch my face as the words sunk in and the worst part is you didn't even ******* care as you saw my eyes go from vibrant blue to as dark as an ocean before a storm because you had known for so ******* long that you didn't really love me and you just needed a reason to be able to say it without looking like the villain, without looking like the one who dropped that single lit cigarette burning that beautiful shade of red and orange as it caught on one leaf that was just a little too dry, you didn't want to look like the one doing that to me by dropping those words on the one piece of me no one else had ever been able to see and ******* you knew exactly what to say to absolutely ******* destroy me in just a few words and as they tumbled from your beautiful bubble gum pink lips I swear you smirked a little as my much less beautiful horribly pale lips turned into a frown and a gasp escaped them because those words left me absolutely speechless. I would've rather you just held the lit cigarette right against my skin over and over like you used to do in that forest right beside the meadow after you pulled out clumps of grass leaving them lay lifelessly waiting for one to finally light because that would've been so much more bearable and understandable than those three words that you let slip out ever so carelessly. C.a.l

Do you remember that night
The way my fingers trailed up your spine
My lips lingering on your collarbone momentarily
Your breathing becoming intensified with every word I spoke

Do you remember that morning
That way your skin glowed
Your lips forming the words "I love you" through the coffee mug
My eyes holding a lackluster apology for anyone to come after me

Do remember a week from that night
The way your muscles tensed under my palms when he called
Your voice shaking as you told me it was no one important
My knuckles turning white as i gripped the steering wheel trying to control myself

Do you remember a month from that night
The way my breathing hitched when there was a knock at 2 am
His eyes lowering as he showed the police badge and began to explain
My body losing all sense of surroundings as I collapsed into him begging him to stop saying the things he was

Do you remember a year from that night
The way my eyes darkened when I saw him across the room
How my breathing intensified as I called his name
When he asked who I was I could only mutter your name mixed in with jumbled sentences of questions as to how he could've laid a hand on you and why isn't he in that jail cell and what the **** do you mean he made bail because no matter how much money is in my pocket you aren't coming back

Do you remember me begging you to stop letting him do this to you
Do you remember me screaming at the top of my lungs after the funeral procession
Do you remember me leaving him a eulogy all his own so far in advance from when he would need it that he stashed it under a pile of letters you had written him that he would never read

Do you remember me loving you
Do you remember him doing everything but loving you
Do you remember how it was never my bed that you stayed in for more than a night.

C.a.l

Logically, I know after you left you were fine. I know that you didn't spend the next six months trying to learn how to function again without me, but a small part of me hopes that you did. A part of me hopes more than anything that you spent hours remembering the way your name sounded falling from my lips and how your eyes looked reflected into mine. I hope that you stayed up at all hours of the night clawing at your own soul attempting to find who you were without traces of me being left behind. That every time you heard that song and felt the urge to sing in the car with you windows down your throat burned worse than if you had downed an entire bottle of *****. When she held your hand it felt like razor blades and when she kissed you is felt like you were swallowing shards of glass. I hope you felt things you weren't able to control and I hope you weren't able to lay wrapped in her duvet listening to her talk about a future with you because all you could here was my name blaring over a loud speaker in your mind. I hope for her sake she didn't get the chance to fall in love with you, that you left to come searching for me before she had the time. And I ******* hope more than anything that you experienced half of the pain I did the day you told me you never really loved me. That when you came home last night and I was in his arms and you saw that I finally found another person who could calm my nightmares, that it felt like I was ripping your heart and soul out all in one go and throwing them off the same cliff we went diving off of on our first date.

I also hope you realize that none of this is true. I want to see you smile again, desperately. Even if the next time I see it as on your wedding day when you're handing your love to another, I will not be able to properly breathe without seeing your eyes light up with love again. I hope you realize that no matter how many times you see me wrapped in his arms and I scream i hate you off the rooftops that you will remember the way my lips were afraid to touch yours the first time because I was and still am so ******* in love with you. C.a.l

I love seeing people first thing in the morning, before they're even out of bed, they're messes. But we're all messes aren't we? I mean we all have days where we hate the thought of interacting with anyone else and days when we cringe when we look in the mirror but that's when people are real. When you wake someone up with kisses on their forehead they smile and tell you to go back to sleep and as you kiss down their collar bone their eyes flutter open revealing that vibrant color that you love so much and as you get to the fragile smooth skin of their chest and you bite ever so slightly as you kiss all the way across they smirk and let out a relieved sigh and they are a mess under you. Their hair is messy and they have bags under their eyes and they don't care for once because unlike every other second of the day they don't even realize it as you're kissing down their stomach just above their hipbones before kissing all the way back up right in the middle of their stomach and chest back to those bold slightly swollen sleepy lips and get ever so close, close enough that they can practically feel you, and then going back down to their hips without ever letting them have the privilege of touching their lips to yours and they let out a whimper but they've still not said a full coherent sentence nor have they acknowledged the fact they have lines on the side of their cheek from where their head rested against the pillow after you carried them to bed the night before because they are so consumed by that look in your eyes as you finally grant them the pleasure of pressing your lips against theirs and in that moment they are the definition of carefree as they smile into the kiss so much that their teeth bump against yours and it's awkward and messy but they're happy and they've forgotten about the fact they normally don't speak to anyone in the morning before they're two cups of coffee into a *** as they pull away to catch their breath because all they can think about is how badly they want to tell you they love you and they will over and over again in that raspy sleepy voice in between begging for you to continue as you take away every thought from their mind except for how breathtaking your tongue feels against them and how smooth their thighs are in the palm of your hand as you run your fingertips down causing goosebumps to appear on them and how your fingers wrap into theirs as they grasp the bedsheets and try to maintain their composure and they're still just such a mess and it's the most beautiful thing in the world to see that look of pure exhaustion and satisfaction and love on their face as you lay next to them and stare at the ceiling silently listening to their heart pound in their chest and watching as their mouth once again attempts to remember how to form the words I love you properly. C.a.l

When you yourself suffer with depression you think it's awful. You feel worthless and numb and absolutely any other possible emotion you could think of. Everything and nothing all at once. It cripples you and leaves you stranded in the middle of an open abyss with nothing but your thoughts and dreams of someday being happy but when someone you love is depressed it reveals a whole new level of just how demonic of a disease it is. When the person you care about more than anything and who has saved you yourself from the wraths of suicidal thoughts is calling you and asking you for help you see how truly horrible it can be. As her voice cracks and you can physically hear the pain behind every word it rips your heart out and tosses it off of a cliff and laughs as you watch her crumble before you and all you can do is pray that she can find an ounce of strength left in her body not to do this. Not to let the depression win again because she's always been the strong one, the one to take care of you, but now that the roles are reversed you realize there's nothing you can do and you feel again like your stranded only this time it's behind a clear sheet of glass and on the other side she's standing there surrounded by physical versions of all of the demons in her head, some of which you didn't even know could exist within someone that beautiful, and she's staring at you, eyes pleading and spilling with tears as the demons surround her every movement all you can do is watch. You watch and hope to anyone or anything that may exist with the power to save her to please just do something because as she's being dragged to the ground you think maybe if you tear into your own veins deeps enough and release your own demons that hers will be distracted by the mass amounts of blood and sorrows covering the floor in front of you and even if she only gets away for five minutes, gets to breathe and not scream into nothingness for five minutes, it's worth it because you love her so ******* much that you would risk anything, even liters of your own blood and rooms full of your own monsters living deep in your soul that it would be worth it. C.a.l

You asked me to define happiness and I told you it wouldn't make sense if I tried.
You asked me to define love and I told you to stop searching for answers you didn't want to hear.
You asked me to define loneliness and I told you it didn't matter because you would never face it anyways.
When you asked me to define us I finally snapped. I told you that we are the very definition of destruction and your face dropped because I think you expected me to say we were love and happiness and the opposite of lonely but I didn't. I told you exactly what we are.
We are two souls hopelessly grasping at each other in the middle of a graveyard hoping we don't get pulled underground but anyone but each other.
We are the smoke that curls off of my cigarette that makes you cough and tell me I really shouldn't **** myself in such a slow and stupid way.
We are the two am fights and three am I'm sorry's wrapped in a duvet full of regret.
We are the whiskey bottle you throw against a wall at four pm and the phone call to your mother three hours later when you're beyond drunk telling her you're sorry for being a horrible son.
We are that stack of pictures that sat in the back of your closet for five years before you finally burned them without a second thought.
We are this mass of destruction and it is killing us both.
We are tearing us apart one definition at a time and ripping out pieces of our hearts along the way.
Every time you hold my hands above my head and whisper that you love me while I'm kicking you screaming that I hate you and how dare you get rid of those pills without telling me we are defining everything except love and happiness and God knows I'll never feel lonely because the memory of your hands on my hips will never fade.
We are destructive.
We are miserable.
We are not what love looks like, but ****, I don't know what else to call it.

C.a.l

I've been avoiding this. Writing about you that is. I've been avoiding it because I don't know what to say. I don't know how to explain the complexities that were us and I don't know how to use the word us without making it sound like we were a pair because we weren't and I don't know how to talk about how much I love you without making it sound like I'm in love with you. I have this urge to write about the way your eyes burned through my soul and the way you stuttered when you were drunk and the way I was the only person you ever told about your night terrors but I can't do that without making it seem like more than it really is. Still to this day when that song comes on in the car I turn it up and roll the windows down and sing the lyrics the way you used to and still to this day there are certain things I don't do or say because I know it triggered the flashbacks in your mind but you aren't here so it doesn't matter it's just me not letting myself believe you're really so far away. I grew to discover parts of you you hadn't even discovered yourself and I opened doors within your heart that someone else had locked and hidden away the key. I trusted you. No, I still trust you. You're just so far away and all I can think about is how one hug from you would make all of this insanity evaporate for a few seconds but I can't just get on a plane and leave just to be near you and as I'm typing that I realize it's false because that's exactly what you did with me and I wouldn't even be here if you hadn't. I love you and I love us but I can't keep calling you at three am and you can't keep calling me at midnight so we can cry on the phone together unless there's some way for me to be in your arms again with you whispering how it's okay in my ear and unless you'll be here to stop me from punching a hole in a wall when I'm angry by showing me the scars on your own knuckles from doing the same, unless these things can happen I have to stop trying to ignore my urge to write about you and I have to find a way to stop standing at the top of the staircase expecting you to be there waiting for me every single morning because all I'm doing is killing myself by waiting for you one piece at a time. C.a.l

the day I asked you how I looked in my dress, I knew I looked awful. I was curious how you'd word it and if you'd be honest at all. You were, but you made it into a joke and now looking back I don't even remember where that hideous dress ended up by the end of the night. Somewhere still in your room probably.

- when you asked if I was afraid as we rode up the first hill of the roller coaster and I said no, I lied. I was terrified and when you put your hand over mine on my harness I breathed for the first time in what felt like hours.

- I wasn't ever asleep in the slightest when I pulled myself into you in the middle of the night. I was having the nightmares again and you're the only thing that makes them stop.

- the nightmares are back now. I haven't gone a night without one since you left.

- I am irrevocably in love with you.

- the night I came over and found you drunk and smashing porcelain plates against a frozen brick wall and you pushed me against it so hard I slapped you and screamed that I ******* hated everything about you just to snap you out of that blind rage and then held you for five hours while you sobbed and whispered apologies into my side, I didn't just happen to stop by. Your mother called me because you were screaming my name at the top of your lungs.

- I hate that ugly sweater you always wear because it doesn't match your eyes the right way but I love the way it always smells like you

- when you told me about how I called you at four am and started reading a eulogy I had written for my own mother and riddling off a list of songs to play at your funeral despite the fact she is still very much alive and I pretended to not remember it, I did. I remembered all of it. And I'm still embarrassed to this day.

- it's been months and I still can't put my phone on silent for fear of missing your call

- if you did call, I'm not sure I would answer          
                                                                                                                    C.a.l

You’re swimming in so much potential
You’re always one crashing wave
Away from drowning in it
You’ve been treading water
Fully aware
You’re on borrowed time
How much stamina
Do you think you have left
Before your muscles will start to shake?
How many life jackets
Have been thrown at you
That you pushed away
Just to preserve a facade
Of the man you think you should be?
If you aren’t careful
You’re going to find yourself
In the deepest parts of the sea
With no one around
Your muscles will give out
Your pride will drag you down
Your lungs will be flooded
With everything you could have been
You will drown
Under all the best parts of yourself
All the parts
You were never brave enough to embrace